Darwin's Black Box

It was once expected that the basis of life would be exceedingly
simple. That expectation has been smashed. Vision, motion, and
other biological functions have proven to be no less sophisticated
than television cameras and automobiles. Science has made enormous
progress in understanding how the chemistry of life works, but
the elegance and complexity of biological systems at the molecular
level have paralyzed science's attempt to explain their origins.
There has been virtually no attempt to account for the origin
of specific, complex biomolecular systems, much less any progress.
Many scientists have gamely asserted that explanations are already
in hand, or will be sooner or later, but no support for such assertions
can be found in the professional science literature. More importantly,
there are compelling reasons-based on the structure of the systems
themselves--to think that a Darwinian explanation for the mechanisms
of life will forever prove elusive.
1

Biochemist Michael Behe says that modern science has made the
Darwinian explanation of the origin of complex life forms much
less believable than it was in Darwin's day. In the 19th
century, it was believed that a cell was just "a homogeneous
globule of protoplasm."
2
They did not know about DNA or the
complex processes that go on inside a cell. Blood clotting, cellular
transport, vision, and the body's method of fighting diseases
are "irreducibly complex systems" which could not possibly
have evolved.

Take blood clotting, for example. On the surface it would appear
that when blood is exposed to air, it dries out and clots. It
isn't that simple. Behe used a whole chapter to describe the process.
He even included a "blood coagulation cascade" flow
chart showing how 32 proteins are involved in the process. Blood
has to clot rapidly to prevent the animal from bleeding to death,
but must not clot in the arteries or veins. It is a very complicated
feedback and control system.

Behe also discusses Darwin's 1859 argument that a simple light-sensitive
spot could have evolved into a complex eye. (This argument is
repeated in Richard Dawkins' 1996 book, Climbing Mount Improbable.)
It turns out that a "simple light-sensitive spot" is
the result of a complex series of chemical reactions that takes
three pages to explain. If any one step of the series of events
fails, then the whole process fails, and the spot is not sensitive
to light.

In the same way, the transfer of material through membranes inside
a cell, and the body's mechanism for fighting disease, could not
have evolved because every part of the system must be present
for it to do anything useful.

Behe also examines the idea that chemicals could assemble themselves
into the first living cell. He gives an excellent presentation
of why origin-of-life experiments, which were viewed as promising
successes decades ago, are now viewed as disappointing failures
in professional circles. Despite this, students are still being
taught in high school and college that these experiments were
successful. Behe says,

In light of these well-publicized successes an outsider can be
excused for feeling a sense of shock when he stumbles across pessimistic
reviews of origin-of-life research in the professional literature,
such as one written by Klaus Dose, a prominent worker in the field.
In his assessment of the state of the problem, Dose pulls no punches.
"More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life
in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to
a better perception of the immensity of the problem of origin
of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions
on principal theories and experiments in the field either end
in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance."
3

He then devotes 13 pages to his literature search of 1200 papers
in the Journal of Molecular Evolution (JME) and other technical
sources.

In fact, none of the papers published in JME over the entire course
of its life as a journal has ever proposed a detailed model by
which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in
a gradual step-by-step Darwinian fashion.
4

He also searched the 20,000 papers published in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences (1984-1994) and found
400 papers that were concerned with molecular evolution. Examining
these 400 papers he found that "no papers were published
in the PNAS that proposed detailed routes by which complex
biochemical structures might have developed.
5

Then he searched the indexes of 30 bio-chemistry text books for
entries on evolution. Out of 185,500 index entries, only 138 claimed
to deal with evolution. Typically they were single baseless assertions
like, "Organisms have evolved and adapted to changing conditions
on a geological time scale and continue to do so."
6

Behe's book is subtitled, "The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution."
That might have made a better title than the main title. Twentieth
century science has opened the "black box" of living
systems and has found the insides to be much more complex than
19th century scientists supposed. What is found inside the box
presents a challenge that the theory of evolution simply can't
answer.